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Abstract

Objective – To determine if there
is an association between library use and student retention.

Design – Quantitative analysis.

Setting – A large research university in Australia.

Subjects
– 6330 new undergraduate students.

Methods
– The researcher obtained a data set on all new undergraduate
students registered at the institution in April 2010 from the student enrolment
system. The data set included students’ identification number, age, gender,
Australian postal code, and country of residence. Using the students’
identification numbers, the author then retrieved information from the
library’s systems on the number of physical library items borrowed, and the
number of logins to authenticated electronic library resources by this cohort
at three points in the first semesters of 2010 and 2011. These three points in
the semester fell after the course withdrawal date, mid-semester, and after
exams. The author obtained additional data sets from the student enrolment
system at the end of the first semester of 2010, and after the course
withdrawal date and after exams in the first semester of 2011 to determine
which students from the original sample were retained over the 18 month period.
The researcher then compared library use data for students still enrolled at
each date to those who had withdrawn from their studies.

The researcher also coded students’ data according to age and
socio-economic status to allow further analysis. All students in the sample
were grouped into two age categories: students under 21 years of age, and
mature students, which included all students aged 21 years and over. Those
students with a permanent Australian address (5125) were coded as low, medium,
or high socioeconomic status using the 2006
Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas. Postal codes were also used to determine
if a student resided in close proximity to the university library in Western
Australia, and could be expected to access the physical collection.

Main
Results – Students who withdrew by the end of their first semester in 2010
were more likely not to access online library resources at all (39% versus
20.4% of retained students). By the end of the first semester of 2011, retained
students still showed higher use of library online resources. Over half of those
leaving their studies did not login to library resources by the end of the
first semester of their second year of study, compared to 17.6% of retained
students. Borrowing rates for physical library items was very low among both
retained students and those who withdrew from their studies in both years.

The data did not demonstrate a strong association between a
student’s socioeconomic status, library use, and their retention. The findings
regarding age were more significant when it came to retention, with mature
students more likely to withdraw from their studies by the end of their first
semester than those under 21. In terms of their library use, retained mature
students were more likely to borrow physical items from the library than
younger students in both their first and second years of study.

Conclusion – While students who remained enrolled over the 18 month period
did demonstrate higher use of the library’s electronic and physical collections
than those who withdrew, the low use of the library’s physical and electronic
resources even by those retained undermines any conclusions that could be drawn
about the positive associations between library use and retention. Mature
students may benefit from targeted library supports, as their library use seems
to be more positively associated with their retention than with younger
students. Socio-economic status did not appear to play a major role in library
use and retention, according to the study’s findings.

Commentary

This study is one of many currently attempting to connect the work
of the academic library to larger institutional aims like student retention.
While assessing the impact of library collections and services on student
success is not new, there has been increasing emphasis placed on it by organizations
such as the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in recent
years. In her high profile ACRL sponsored report The Value of Academic Libraries, Oakleaf (2010) highlights student
retention as an area where academic libraries can and have demonstrated their
contributions. The author’s work here shows that North American academic
libraries are not the only ones feeling the pressure to provide evidence of
their value, and emphasizes the need for those engaged in this work to look beyond
their own borders for best practices and strategies.

The author states that other libraries will find more value in the
study’s methodology than in its findings, which cannot be easily generalized.
This is, in part, due to the eccentricities of the data collected at this
institution. For example, categorizing all students 21 and over as mature is
problematic, but the data obtained from the university’s enrolment system could
not be parsed further. Logins to authenticated resources may also be one of the
best data sets available for exploring library use, but as students
authenticate at this institution for services ranging from chat reference to
database access, it is difficult to tie results to collection spending or
specific types of library support. The limitations of using postal codes to
determine socioeconomic status are also acknowledged. An earlier study by the
author at the same institution did find differences in the use of the library’s
computers based on students’ socioeconomic status, and it would be interesting
to know why that source of data was not used again or why the author relied
only on the use of electronic resources as a measure of students’ library use
in relation to this variable in the follow up research (Haddow
& Joseph, 2010).

Overall, the study’s transparency around the strengths and
limitations of the methodology employed, as well as the detail provided about
the results (for example, including the mean, median, and mode for logins)
increases its utility as a model for other libraries (Glynn, 2006). This study
provides a useful example for how libraries can use data collected in the
course of university business, like registration data, to explore library
impact on students. Those interested in library use and student retention
should also refer to the Oakleaf report, which outlines a variety of additional
data points and methods that could be used for this type of research.